Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Bottle Cap Pumpkin & Zero Waste

I having been saving my plastic bottle caps for at least a year now in the hopes of making some cool projects with them. I have done a few things with them so far. See last year's plastic bag wreath and this year's Halloween wreath. I wanted to see if my small hole punch would work on the bottle caps. It did! Oh the possibilities! I punched 4 holes in all of my small orange bottle caps last night. Then using all purpose thread and a tapestry needle, I strung them together to form a circle. I then punched a few holes in 3 green (Sprite) bottle caps for the stem of the bottle cap pumpkin. Now what to do with it? Do I glue it to felt and make a trivet? Do I glue it to something else and make a wall hanging? I'm not sure. However the hole punch opens up a whole world of ideas for ornaments for Christmas this year.

In 7 days I have made 7 knitted items using 4 whole skeins of yarn and a third of 2 other skeins of yarn. Six dishcloths and 1 hot pad. Not bad for single skein September. Also not bad for making gifts for Christmas. There are also 4 birthdays coming up that I need to make and / or buy for.

I started participating in zero waste week last Wednesday. I follow Julia on Easy Eco To Go. She has completed 3 weeks without filling up a whole trash bag! You can follow here journey called Bash The Trash on her blog. One of my biggest obstacles is my family. Why do I keep finding banana peels in the trash can? Zero waste does not mean that you don't throw anything in the trash. It means throwing as little away as possible. Can you recycle the item via your town, a store (like recycling ink cartridges or cell phones), or in your own home by crafting with it? Can it be composted? When shopping, think about the packaging of what you are buying. How much of the packaging can be recycled? How much of it will go in the trash? Also think about buying reusable items vs disposable. Handkerchiefs vs tissues, cloth napkins vs paper napkins, dishcloths and dish towels vs paper towels and sponges, items like the Diva Cup vs tampons, etc. So far so good. Today is day 7 and I don't have any trash to throw out tomorrow (trash day). I made a few flannel hankies just in time for a cold to hit my house. My husband said he wasn't going to use them until he found out that they get softer after every wash.

4 comments:

I did throw out the diapers in the diaper genie. I didn't think about the diaper genie until last night. Thank goodness he is pretty potty trained right now. Now we just need to work on bed time wetting.

About Me

I have a BA in Textiles and several units in Early Childhood Education. I am a freelance arts and crafts teacher, a weaver and loom repairer at a textile museum, a crochet teacher at my local yarn shop, and am very active in my community. Since June 2009, I have been filming my own local access t.v. show on being environmental. You can view past episodes on my you tube channel, textiles4you.